On Milbank: Let’s not and say we did

Tuesday, November 16, 2010 — Adam Kotsko

It has come to my attention that Milbank has weighed in on Stephen Fry’s claim that women don’t enjoy sex. I have read the article, and it seems to me to have a lot of questionable claims in it, of the kind one would expect.

Instead of actually posting about it at length, though, this time around I think I’m just going to summarize the way these things go in general, to save us all valuable time.

Adam: Milbank’s opinion on this matter seems to me to be ill-founded and wrong.People who agree with Adam: I agree, and I’d like to point out a couple extra things you didn’t address.People who are on the fence: I don’t know — I certainly don’t agree with everything the guy says, but he makes some good points.Adam: What are those good points?People who are on the fence: Well, if you remove this remark from its context and completely reinterpret it in the most sympathetic possible way, it seems to be arguably non-bad.Adam: But that approach doesn’t really make sense — and even if we follow it, the end result is still not great.People who are on the fence: Okay, fine, we’re just uncomfortable with the fact that you’re too negative. Add some nuance! Stop being so one-sided all the time!

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23 Responses to “On Milbank: Let’s not and say we did”

Well, if you took the comments from the fence sitters out of context, and read their comments in most sympathetic possible way, they are really making good points.
I’m just saying, add some nuance to the fence sitters, don’t be so negative.

Oh well, now I guess I will have to click the link and read it, if you won’t bother to make fun of it for me… .

Until rather recently, I was at least somewhat impressed by the way in which Milbank had refrained from using any discussion of sex or gender as an excuse to talk (however elliptically) about gay marriage, as in the states. (See: People who are on the fence.)

Alas, those days now seem to be gone. (See: People who agree with Adam.)

But perhaps I was previously blinded, as Milbank’s work was a stepping stone between my evangelical past and my whatever-the-hell-it-currently-is-probably-nihilism present/future. (See: Adam?)

Okay, I can’t resist pointing out one of the most poignant remarks I’ve ever seen from Milbank, about masturbation, “whose fantasy pays sad tribute to the real.” How bizarre to have a world-famous theologian musing about masturbation!

“This might give us the confidence to say that, in the experience of most of us, sex doesn’t usually work all that superbly well the first time round, and gets better – often over the course of years, not months – the more we feel secure enough to give free rein to our imaginations with someone we trust and resonate with on every level.”

I’m not sure what constitutes ‘work’ for Milbank here, but this is obviously the musings of one who has been deprived of much of life experience…

My favorite line is “This is that, to go out on the heath in your tweed jacket in search of denim-clad youths for sundry erotic horseplay is itself precisely not to like sex at all – in John Donne’s sense.”

I would just like to add: the Women in Theology blog has a classic response to Milbank as well, in the form of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. My favorite quote is about Milbank being the re-incarnation of Eusebius. Classic.

Yes, but not nearly as creepy as the inevitable non-segue which apparently connects the rest of the article to the ‘we need a more paradoxically radical conservatism or conservative radicalism’. (I don’t know why the chiasmus makes it worse, but it…er…somehow… does).

It does shame me to admit that I once thought that slogans of this sought might have meant something (Zizek w/Chesterton! Badiou w/ Aquinas!), other than ordinary, everyday, Toryism plus an (understandable but politically ….worrying) fondness for Medieval regalia.

Also, is it just me, but is the rhetoric getting nastier and the similes at once more heavy-handed and less meaningful with every article? While I know that ‘An und fuer sich’ takes a harsh line on ‘equivocating points out of existence’ (attested to in the comments and in Adam’s aritcle), I can’t help feeling that Milbank in his ‘hard man of assertion mode’, manages to be as misty and vague as if he were politely equivocating: that his noance somehow manages to lack what’s good about nuance and what’s good about ‘straight-talkin’…’